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Urban and Social Policy (USP)
The Urban and Social Policy Concentration is designed to provide students with an understanding of the policy challenges and opportunities that are particular to cities in both the developed and developing world. Cities now have responsibilities in virtually every policy arena from developing infrastructure, to sustainable economic development, to meeting the basic needs of safety and security and human welfare, including: education, health, and housing. These are general public policy issues that are especially affected by the urban context. Within the concentration, students have the option of focusing on an Urban Policy or Social Policy Track.
The Urban Policy Track is designed to provide students with an understanding of policy issues that are unique to the urban environment. The only global trend that is guaranteed to continue during the 21st century is urbanization; we are reaching an era in which more than half of the world’s population resides in cities. Trends in immigration, migration, transportation infrastructure, and economic development have contributed to the rapid growth of cities; and the traditional paradigms used to study urban issues like city management, urban planning, housing, urban education, and transportation are now being expanded to include sustainability, innovations in technology, and global communication networks. The Urban Policy Track prepares students to think critically about the economic, social, political and technological forces that shape urban areas across the globe.
Social policy, too, is undergoing rapid change. The challenges of immigration and immigrant incorporation, growing racial and ethnic diversity in societies around the world, and changing gender relations are transforming old paradigms of policy design, implementation, and analysis. Public-private partnerships, government contracting, and the proliferation of nongovernmental social-service organizations are changing the face of social policy at all levels—local, state, and national—and students who want to work in this field must be conversant with these and other important social policy trends. Students in the Social Policy Track can focus on a specific area of social policy or tailor the concentration to fit their unique interests.
The study of urban and social policy at SIPA draws not only on SIPA’s own outstanding faculty in these areas, but also on the resources available elsewhere at Columbia, in the Arts and Sciences and in the University’s other professional schools. Columbia is a world-class center of teaching and research in many areas of urban and social policy; and students in the concentration have access to a broad array of courses from the Departments of History, Sociology, and Economics as well as the Mailman School of Public Health, the School of Social Work, the Business and Law Schools, the Program in Urban Planning at the Architecture School, as well as Teacher’s College. Students can also focus their studies on the challenges of urbanization in particular regions of the world.
Within the Urban Policy Track, students are required to take at least 15 credits in the concentration. One course must be a general survey class in urban politics or policy. Students may develop programs of study that focus on:
- Urban Politics and Governance
- Management in Urban Public Sector or Not-for-Profits
- Urban Social Policy (includes Family, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Immigration and Poverty)
- Sustainable Urban Economic Development and Environmental Policy
- Economic Development Policy, Urban Planning and Land Use
- Sustainability and Environmental Policy
- Housing Policy
- Education Policy
- Health Policy
- Crime, Safety and Security Policy
- Employment and Labor Policy